back from the interview room. He put a hand on her shoulder
to delay her as Gavin Muriin walked ahead.
‘Detective Sergeant Fry everything under control?’
Fry felt the muscles in her shoulder knotting where his
hand was touching her. She drew in her breath steadily to
O V
control the reaction, which she knew was unreasonable. She wondered whether DC! Kessen had been made aware of her background, her reason for transferring to Derbyshire from the West Midlands. Some men had no idea how to behave towards a woman who had been a rape victim. On the other hand, maybe he had too little interest in her even to have read her file. She was afraid he was measuring up to be her worst nightmare a large stumbling block in her progress up the promotional ladder. A transfer from E Division was starting to look even more attractive.
‘Yes, sir/ she said.
‘Good team that you have, I expect?’ he said.
‘Excellent.’
Kessen took his hand off her shoulder, but he was still standing too close, several inches inside her personal space. Pry could see that he was the sort of man who wasn’t aware of the effect he had on people. Probably he had been walking a fine line for a while, waiting for someone to put their hand up and complain.
‘DC Cooper now — a very conscientious officer, isn’t he? An example to some of the others.’
‘Sure,’ said Fry. Well, compared to the ones who rang in sick with bad backs, she thought. But where the hell was this paragon of virtue right now? Just like yesterday, he had managed to make a few simple enquiries last for hours.
Fry looked at her watch. If only she could g^et away from meetings for a while, she would get out there and find that
o ‘ o
example to the others, and kick his arse.
209
‘Gavin, has Ben Cooper called in yet?’ she said as she caught up with him in the C1D room.
‘No. He’s interviewing the staff at the Snake Inn, isn’t he?’
‘Let’s hope so. He should have called by now.’
‘He’ll be having a pie and a couple of pints while he’s there,’ said Murfin. “I would.
‘Back to the phones, Gavin/
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And leave the lobster alone.’
Ben Cooper perched on the sofa in the sitting room of the Lukasx. bungalow. It was much too warm for him. Even with his heavy waxed coat hanging in the hallway, he still felt stifled by the central heating.
‘You don’t sound as though you’re interested in the past,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t your father’s historv interest you?’
‘Oh, it used to,’ said Peter Lukasy. ‘But time passes, and people change. There comes a point when we have to move on.’
‘Perhaps your father doesn t feel al)le to move on yet.’
‘Oh, 1 think that’s exactly right,’ said Eukasx.
Grace Lukasy. had disappeared somewhere to the hack of the house to leave them alone. Her departure had left Peter looking uncertain. He was reluctant to sit down, but instead stood on the rug in front of the fireplace, swaving gently on the balls of his feet, his ga/.e tending to drift past Cooper’s shoulder to the window that looked out on Woodland Crescent.
‘We all treasure our Polish heritage, of course,’ said Lukasx. ‘But most of us have become as much British now as Polish. My father is going the other way; he’s going backwards, regressing into his past, almost into a time when he knew no English. Being two nationalities is a delicate enough balance as it is. I don’t need my father trying to push me the wrong way.’
‘But you were born here, weren’t you? Is it such a difficult balance?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Lukasx. ‘Of course, I’m half English. But every time I’m asked to spell my name, I feel a bit foreign. Some Poles came up with anglicised versions when they settled
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here. My name, (or example, could so easily have been changed to Lucas. Nobody would have questioned it then. Peter Lucas. It sounds fine, doesn’t it? You couldn’t get much more English than that. But there arc other people who believe it would be a betrayal of some kind, a denial of our nationality, a sacrifice of a vital part of ourselves.’
‘Your father being one of those people?’
‘Yes, my father. And his sister, my aunt Krystyna.’
‘But what dojou think?’
‘It has to be what seems right for the individual, doesn’t it? It has to be a question of how we sec ourselves, whether we think of ourselves as English or Polish, or whatever. All that matters is what each person thinks his own identity is, and whether he’s willing to sacrifice any part of it to be able to fit in. That’s the question we have to ask ourselves.’
‘Not as easy a question as it sounds.’
‘Did you notice my father’s hand?’ asked Lukasx.
